changed: and if it was allowed to spread in the minds of the multitude without control, the worst consequences at future period might be justly apprehended."

This proposition, as the facts on which it rested referred principally to his own Diocese, made it necessary for the Bishop to reply; and he has left the following abstract, as the substance of his speech on that occasion. "As the discussion of this subject appeared to me exceedingly dangerous, and as I well knew that there was no just ground for dreading any increase of Popery, I thought it right to say something in answer to Lord Ferrers; and undertook to prove, that his statement of the number of Catholics in the Diocese of Chester in the year 1717, was extremely erroneous, having been taken only from very inac

curate

curate returns to Bishop Gaskell's visitatorial inquiries, and not from any parliamentary survey, which alone could be depended upon: that two such surveys had been lately taken of the number of Papists in England and Wales, one in 1767, the other in 1780; that the number returned at the former period was 67,916, at the latter, 69,376; that the increase therefore, in these thirteen years, throughout the whole kingdom, was only 1,460, and that this was owing entirely, not to the increase of Popery, but to the increase of population: that I had in my own possession, in consequence of inquiries made upon the subject, very convincing proofs, that in the diocese of Chester alone there had been within the last sixty years an increase of more than 250,000 souls, and that this would more than account for the

F

progress which

Popery

Popery had made in that See. Upon the whole I contended, that, considering the great increase of general population in this realm, the Catholics were a decreasing rather than an increasing quantity, and that there was therefore no ground for the alarms, which some wellmeaning but certainly not well-informed people had taken on that subject. These observations were satisfactory to the House, and Lord Ferrers withdrew his motion."

Whilst however the Bishop of Chester thus expressed his sentiments in Parliament, and endeavoured to rectify errors, which, if left uncontradicted, might have ended to inflame the already irritated state of the public mind against the Catholics of this country, he was not unmindful of the real nature of their religion, nor inattentive in guarding those

committed

committed to his care against its false and dangerous tenets. As the best and mildest and most effectual mode of doing this, he addressed a Letter to his clergy, and at the same time printed for the use of his diocese, in the compendious form of a small tract, the substance of five very admirable sermons by Archbishop Secker, which appeared to him to contain the most complete refutation of Popery that he had ever seen in so small a compass. It is indeed one of the many treatises on this subject, which should be particularly put into the hands of those, who are at all unsettled and wavering in their religious principles. It is a short, perspicuous statement of all the points at issue between Papists and Protestants. The spirit in which it is written is truly Christian, and the general argument, in my judgment, and, I think,

in the judgment of every unprejudiced and candid man, is altogether unanswerable.

Besides the dispersion of this valuable little tract, the Bishop made it a primary object in the course of visiting his See, to inquire as minutely as possible into the conduct of the Catholics; directing his clergy to keep a vigilant eye upon their motions, and to inform him of any transactions respecting them, which were worthy of notice: and I have his authority for saying, that the result of this inquiry was, that he could not find that they had in any instance attempted to make converts; that they adhered quietly to their own persuasion, without disturbing the faith of their Protestant neighbours; and that so far from adding to their numbers, a Popish priest had on the contrary been converted, and

regularly